Wandering Thoughts

By its nature, anarchist theory is a vagabond theory, light of step,
always on the move. The reason is simple. Reality is not a static
thing, but a play of phenomena in which every individual is actively
immersed. Entrenchment of positions makes no real sense, but traps the
anarchist in the bogs of ideology and militancy. For this reason,
anarchist theoretical endeavors go their farthest when they are taken
lightly and playfully, as explorations, experiments and adventures, not
tasks or duties. What appears here is done in that spirit. Some of it I
wrote years ago, and no longer necessarily agree with, but I think it
has a certain challenge, a certain bite to it.

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mini-theory

(EXCERPTS)

Ruins are
playgrounds whether Zapotec or Mayan, Egyptian or modern. Rather than
preserve them, why not play with them ’til they wear away into nothing,
and forget the cultures that created them? The memory of culture is the
preservation of culture - and culture is merely the sacred limit placed
on creativity and play. Insurgents destroy sacred limits.

***The
consensus process subjects the individual to the group. It subjects the
immediate to the process of mediation. It is conservative by nature
since it only allows change when the entire group agrees to it...It is
internalized control, not anarchy.

***For society to
function, desire has to be tamed. It has to be colonized by the economy
- turned into lack/need, the fulfillment of which is attributed to the
commodities offered by society. To so direct desire requires
restrictions and structures. As these increase, desire fades into a
mere ghost of itself. The restrictions and structures gradually come to
exist only for themselves.

***My interest in ruins stems, in
part, from attempts to develop strategies for deconstructing cities
playfully, through active, conscious encouragement of unconstrained
rebellion. This requires extensive explorations of cities to learn
secrets which can be used against them.

***There is more
than one way to create an elite. Ruling classes, intellectual classes
and aesthetic classes create an artificial inaccessibility of their
power, knowledge and skills to "the rabble" to reinforce their
position. On the other hand, self-proclaimed "class-conscious" radical
activists deny themselves access to knowledge, vocabulary and
well-honed analytical skills which are readily accessible, in order to
prove their "class purity" or some such nonsense, and, by their absurd
self-denial, create an involuntary elite of those radicals who are
unwilling to impoverish themselves in this way.

***Many
anarchists are actually leftist or liberal libertarians or, in some
cases, simply angry people who still "think" in terms of the images
created by the social context, trapping their thought within society’s
discourse. Until one gets beyond this discourse, thinking outside of
its categories, one’s rebellion remains part of the structures of
authority. Most anarchists are quite content with society’s discourse,
happily creating an "anarchy" that is thoroughly unchallenging,
mild-mannered, tame and palatable - all in the name of "education" and
"action."

***Cybernetic technology is dependent upon industrial technology for its existence. So much for the pipe-dreams of cyber-utopia.Barter
is still economic exchange. Money allows for a more efficient flow of
economic exchange. Why not just get rid of economy altogether? ]

***Often
"health" opposes vitality. Those who value "health" often pursue it in
an ascetic and passive manner - by giving up something. Their longing
for health is not a vital, intense desire-trajectory - it is a business
transaction or a manufacturing process - an attempt to achieve an end -
but such a process is never satisfactory, because it is the nature of a
longing to perpetually reproduce the void that is its origin. Vitality,
intensity - these are the only reasons to have health - and living them
creates health or makes it irrelevant.

***The best of
post-modernism fails because it removes the drift to the realm of the
intellect - static lives moved by random thoughts rather than ecstatic
lives created by the dialect of active conscious thinking and ec-static
doing?

***If the "subject", the "self", has been
destroyed/deconstructed, then all that prevents one from creating one’s
own self, one’s own subjectivity in each moment is the continued belief
in something greater than oneself that is creator - i.e., the continued
belief in god. In the present era, god is society.